Google hits suggest that the novel was written based on an earlier draft of the movie script. Which makes sense, since these novels were published prior to the movie release. Kind of wild that "Luke, I am your father" was just floating around out there as a book for like a month before moviegoers were smacked in the face with it.

I care about canon, but my care level is moderate and flexible. I prefer it, partly to lose myself in the believability of its "truth" vs. the others and partly because the Legends stuff is so expansive that I'll only ever be able to consume a much smaller percentage of it; the narrowing of canon makes it a lot easier to stay on top of a lot of the canon catalog in various forms.

Still, I do think it's easiest to just think of these as stories being retold based on historical records about this galaxy far far away, and obviously historical records in real life range from "this almost certainly happened, it's really well-sourced" to "this may have happened, but the sourcing is a bit thinner, it could still easily be corroborated or controverted" to "some have believed this to be true - in fact, some still do - but there's quite a bit of evidence now to suggest that it probably isn't." Canon stories exist in the first category and Legends stories exist somewhere in the continuum from the second category to the third, depending on whether canon material has stepped on it and how significantly it has stepped on it.

Of course, since the larger truths of the Star Wars galaxy don't actually matter at all, there's plenty of room to enjoy stories that leave a person shrugging and saying, "It may not be true, but it's a hell of a story."

The Return of the Jedi episode of Icons Unearthed was way weaker. Just seemed like not much juicy gossip besides bagging on the director for 30 minutes. The prequel episodes should be awesome though.

I'm so sad that a full year of deGrom was taken away from us.

And that I have to sweat his arm falling off every start for the rest of his career.

$300m for six years sounds about fair when he opts out this year.

It's overwhelmingly clear at this point that the idiot jilted lovers that make up most of Seattle's fanbase have bought the anti-Russ PR hook, line, and sinker, and when we play the Broncos on national TV on opening week, the crowd will likely boo the **** out of him.

Allow me to formally disown all of these people in advance and express my embarrassment to share a fanbase with them. In fairness, Seahawks fans were always doomed to be a terrible group because most of the fanbase is University of Washington fans, and UW fans are the worst people on earth. Anyway...

Wilson is a goober with a weird personality. A very difficult guy to relate to. But, that's no more true now that he's in Denver than it was during his time in Seattle. Also, simpletons are very quick to conflate "annoying personality" with "bad person"; by all indications, he's the former but not the latter. Yes, he has this well-manicured public persona that makes it difficult not to think of A-Rod, the phoniest human being in the history of the species. However, Russell keeping assiduously to a weekly and seemingly pretty involved visiting schedule to Seattle Children's Hospital for a decade straight is just above and beyond anything that I can really imagine from someone who fails to bring real substance to the table.

Since fans mostly operate on a "you've got facts, but I've got feelings" level, of course none of this logic matters. They want to find their way to a certain conclusion, so they're going to. And worse yet, they will surround themselves with others who will do likewise, and they will then act to strengthen each other. They will stand there in conversations with one saying to the other, "Your stupid idea isn't stupid!" And the other will be flattered and say, "THANK YOU! I, in turn, would like to tell you that your stupid idea isn't stupid!" And they will both walk away happy and affirmed. I love how these ****ing feedback loops go.

I'm annoyed to even have to make this case because Wilson is not a favorite player of mine, and certainly especially isn't now that he's not even on my team. But I just can't with these stupid emotional fans who all live their lives 24/7 with their brains set to the mode of Level 0 Gorilla ****, and have zero intention of switching the dial to a better setting. I wouldn't fuss near as much about this if that first game with Denver wasn't on national TV, but I'm not looking forward to the sheer embarrassment that will accompany the showing that I now know is coming.

Wow, this is an incredibly well written rant that verbally eviscerates everyone involved, almost to the point where I can't even tell which side you're on. I'm impressed.

One of my favorite lines from my bar hopping days is one evening at a familiar haunt, I turned to my friend and said "I think we know 95% of the people in this dump."
His response, "And I hate every ****ing one of them."

This reminds me of that.

When Russell Wilson was our QB, I was happy to have him, because he was a great QB and the fact of his being somewhat obnoxious was a small price to pay for the level of play we received. This, as opposed to a hypothetical where we had been the team to bring Deshaun Watson in, which would have thrown me into a full-blown fan identity crisis. Russell seems like a decent human being despite his flaws, and I appreciate the time he gave us.

Of course, appreciating him doesn't mean that I want him to win games, which is doubly the case when we have Denver's first-round pick next year. Every Bronco loss is a quantifiable victory for us, so I hope he loses a lot this season.

People spin a good yarn about how their real issue with Wilson is the way that he left. This is, of course, complete bullshit. There is no scenario where his wanting to leave could ever have resulted in them being okay with "how he handled it." Fans feel unduly entitled to a player's permanent loyalty. The Cleveland fans burning LeBron's jersey when he went to Miami were, and are, pathetic losers.

For what it's worth, even if a rare person exists who truly is bothered by "the way he left," and wouldn't necessarily have developed such animosity if the handling had been different...that person is wrong. The complaint you'll perhaps see is that he lied on his way out, that he disingenuously claimed that he wanted to stick with the Seahawks for a long time. I shall not indulge the fantasy that people would have been way happier if he had just answered questions bluntly and honestly and said "yep, I don't get along with the coach and the front office and I want them to trade me." It would depress his trade value and would create a Baker Mayfield situation where, if circumstances required him to come back, it would be way more untenable. In Seinfeldian parlance: it's a must-lie situation. I'm glad he said what he did. To be clear, the team also claimed that there was nothing brewing right up until the day they traded him, but these fans are selective in their prosecution of these slippery interview answers.

The relationship fell apart because Pete Carroll refuses to run a pass-heavy offense, and his philosophy perpetually hamstrung Wilson until Wilson became too frustrated to want to continue. Carroll has done a lot of good, but he's also a dinosaur who refuses to accept that his philosophy is anything but perfect. Wilson's grievance is very understandable. And for a team to choose a 70-year-old coach over a star QB with peak years left is completely insane. Now that it's done, obviously I want it to work out, and I want the team to be relevant again sooner rather than later (they clearly won't be this year). The offseason movement since that point, including the draft, has seemed pretty sensible. We shall see. But the people who blame Russell entirely for wanting out and don't blame Carroll for being a stubborn dinosaur are just the worst sorts of tribalists.

Wasn't aware of any of that situation beyond the last paragraph, which has been obvious on a national level for a number of years. Also, I don't pay any attention to football until September, I was just simply impressed with amount of vitriol for everyone in the original post.

Yeah, after you said that I read it back, and it amused me to see that I performed a random drive-by on A-Rod in the middle of a post that had nothing to do with him. It's hard not to hear Wilson talk and not think of A-Rod if you're a Seattle sports fan. They deliver the same slick zero-substance interviews that go to 11 on the phony-meter.

Somehow Pete Carroll got spared in that same post despite the fact that I 100% blame him more than anyone for the whole situation. Meh.

I pay close attention to the offseason most of the time, but once we traded Wilson I went back into the same mode that you follow, where football just isn't a sport until September. Obviously this is aided by the fact that the Mariners are suddenly a much more relevant team than the Seahawks are, which hasn't been the case in years.

In fairness, I should also add that many Seahawks players have clearly regarded Wilson with seething contempt for years, which was probably the thing that most discomfited me about his personality during his time with the team. I'm guessing the fact that Carroll is universally loved within the Seattle organization and Wilson was widely disliked had to likely play a part in how things cut during this offseason.

I knew watching CW and Rebels would heighten The Mandalorian Season 2 viewing experience, but damn, Episode 3 was pretty awesome with the additional background. I didn't realize the Bo-Katan voice actress actually plays the live action character. She looks the part too. Although the inner nit in me is wondering how she looks so young if Mando takes place about 30 years after CW ends. It's ok though, I'm willing to suspend disbelief to have these awesome characters. And I didn't realize how important the darksaber was the first time I watched these episodes either.

Also, Sasha Banks! And for my money, she's a lot better actress than Gina Carano, and not a nutjob either.

I'll probably knock out the last 5 episodes tomorrow. Season 1 isn't incredible, by any means, but even that was still interesting enough on re-watch for me to breeze through it.

Did Fennec Shand appear in anything else before Mando? She feels familiar for some odd reason, but I'm pretty sure that was her first appearance.

Katee Sackhoff appears to be 42. If Bo-Katan is near Ahsoka's age (I think she first appeared helmet-on, which isn't helpful to assessing), adding 29 years to her initial Clone Wars appearance puts it very close.

Supposedly Bo-Katan is around 50 in Mando, so I guess it's not that egregious, although you wouldn't really expect someone to be such a badass fighter at that age.

Ahsoka Tano isn't human, so you could easily explain her away by saying Togrutas age slower or something like that.

Oh well, no reason to nit-pick. I just thank the maker for Filoni/Favreau giving us Disney Star Wars awesomeness and doing some nice long-term story-telling.

Fennic is like 60.

As far as your question about her appearing in another show...

I forgot to mention one of my favorite moments from S1.

So the Mining Guild have taken over Timothy Olyphant's little town and enslaved everyone. Olyphant acquires Boba's armor from the Jawas and returns to the town to confront the Mining Guild.

While wearing the armor he walks into the bar and faces down like 20 of them out in the open.

This makes me laugh b/c the armor only covers like 30% of his body. He's completely unprotected from the waist down and his arms and 20 guys are firing at him, but he's now apparently invincible.

Rosario Dawson matches pretty well chronologically with Ahsoka aging at a human speed. She's 43.

Ming-Na Wen is some kind of freak of nature that doesn't age, so it works for that character.

Temuera Morrison is only 3 years older, but visually looks like 15-20 years older and I think it kinda harms the Boba Fett character.

Boba's also only supposed to be like 40 in Mando/his series, so it's kind of an odd choice imo.

I didn't like Captain Marvel on first watch, though I chalked that up in part to it confusing the hell out of me. Then I watched it again yesterday, and...yeah I just don't think I like it. I guess I throw in with the negative crowd on this one, because Iron Man 3 and Eternals are the only ones I really put it above within the MCU.

Will be curious to see what She-Hulk brings to the table, that premieres later this week.

Am hoping the latest Thor offering is on Disney+ by the end of the month, as some have speculated just based on the timing between other theater offerings and eventual streaming availability.

Gave the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk a rewatch for the first time since it first hit theaters 14 years ago. I must say, going into it with "this movie kinda sucks, right?" does make it easier to enjoy than when I went in with "this is gonna be awesome." It's a perfectly decent movie. Bottom quartile of the MCU, sure, but better than I had it in my mind as being. Really wish Norton hadn't been such a pain in the ass that they felt a need to replace him with Ruffalo.

Been doing some hard MCU binging while staying with my brother (he loves this stuff). Over the past few days, I’ve caught up on: Wandavision, Loki, Away From Home, No Way Home, Doctor Strange 2, Shang-Chi, and Eternals.

I’ve been really impressed with everything, deeper thoughts to follow later. I ****ing loved Eternals.

Is this your code phrase for "I've been kidnapped and need help"?

She-Hulk seems like it needed to do a two-episode premiere, since it came across as though the first episode was going to be unlike the rest of the series, just offering an origin to allow the audience to accept being dropped into a legal comedy show. Though I guess the episode must have worked for me since it left me wanting to watch episode 2 right away. The "Captain America ****s" scene was quite amusing.

Not at all, I can’t stop thinking about the film. It did an incredible amount of heavy lifting in a really elegant way. I personally enjoyed the lore dumps and how the exposition was handled. The history stuff was great; I’m intimately familiar with all those time periods.

The pacing managed to be beautifully slow and ponderous despite the huge amount of ground to cover. Imagery and art design was stellar, every frame a painting. As I said, I have a lot of thoughts to unpack especially on this movie.

My only complaint is the evolved deviant guy, they definitely dropped the ball with what was clearly one thread too many. Would have liked to see him actually absorb Thena and escape into space.

I do look forward to your thoughts on the movie when you have the time. I'm open to revisiting it.

I didn't hate it as much as LKJ, but I've never read or heard of anyone that enthusiastic about it, not even the actors. I'd have the same complaint about the "villains", but I think they tried to do entirely too much with so many new characters in a single movie. Yet, it also somehow feels like they didn't do much of anything.